On March 30, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:43 pm to 2:53 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 890-033 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
I wonder if, Bob, who you thought I should not see, you know, for a long time.
I suppose I should be talking to you.
You didn't mention Dean the other day.
That might not be a bad idea, John, just to kind of fuck him up.
That's not that he needs it, but just, you know, who should I see for it?
I don't think you don't need to get an answer.
It's better not to.
I don't think he needs it for bucking up purposes or anything.
What he's worrying about is details and specifics.
You see, that's an interesting character.
I'm putting out this statement today.
I guess that's maybe the way they want it to be.
Yeah, well, I first run, I assume he's going to take a segment of it and do it on film.
And I said, don't do anything.
It'll take you anything, a second over 60 seconds.
Figure out what you want on film.
Do that afterwards.
Don't let them tell you what to do.
put that out, it puts us in a position to call them and they'll come, and we want to work it out with the Hill.
That's a, that'll answer our friends' concerns, and the fact of it being long earlier was one that argued for length on the basis that our problem has been we've said too little and that it's not bad to kind of hammer the thing home and try to force them to report the
Also, it gives us a piece of paper to get to our friends.
I'll get that up to Bush and ask him to use that as a way to move around the world.
You know, I'll say, look, you're the president.
They've done exactly what you're saying they ought to do.
The interesting thing is that there's not much likelihood of there being any of us being called by a grand jury.
The grand jury is working against the crime.
They have nothing to give Bundy at this point, and they apparently aren't going to get it.
Unless Liddy gives them something, and that doesn't seem like it.
Liddy's going to take the fifth.
And then if they've given him immunity, he's going to take the fifth anyway.
And he's playing the technical legal ground that he's on appeal, and that they can't give him immunity.
In order to get any...
He'll splatter.
He took the bed on purpose so they'd give us immunity.
Yeah.
That's an area I don't know anything about.
I mean, the things that go beyond this.
I don't know any more than I should, I guess.
Well, that would get us into the runaway grand jury.
Yeah.
But as of now, there is a runaway grand jury.
No, but I mean, if McCord splatters away, it would be good for me.
I mean, if he tries to do it, then what am I going to do?
Well, the Senate paid.
It's first the Senate.
Now, see, that's where he is now.
And Silver finished with Hunt and wanted to call McCord.
And Sir Ecker won't let him have it.
until he finishes with the Senate.
So he doesn't get McCord until after, well, McCord goes back to the Senate on Wednesday, so the grand jury doesn't get him until after Wednesday.
Well, then McCord is left with the Senate.
That's right.
And he's doing a beautiful job, and the Senators are certainly doing a great job of backing it up on that.
Sorry, the wiper is really something.
I locked the wiper one out today.
Did you find it with a bachelor?
Nope.
I didn't find it.
Well, we may still, we've got about 90% sure that he got it in cash and did not report it.
Individual or?
No, a bunch of them.
No, I don't know what I mean.
Who took it?
Police.
Police took it?
The candidate or the?
I don't know.
That's the point.
He knows.
We made sure of those things that every candidate knew exactly what he was getting at.
I was trying to push this morning again.
He called on something else and then got into this and said one thing he didn't read, what he was calling on.
He looked straight at it and said, you know, the vice, Baker did not call the vice president.
The vice president called Baker.
He said, I thought you might want to know because you apparently had a misunderstanding on that.
Well, I sure as hell didn't have a misunderstanding on it.
Baker was kind of, you know.
What the hell's that?
I don't know.
I've been trying to help.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I have a really good .
But anyway, we got into the discussion and I said to Harry, have you read what our Republican friends now, if you pile them all together, what they're saying?
Because that's something he said, he said he wanted to be helpful that day.
And I said, what you said last night at the YRs wasn't helpful to Bush.
He said Watergate's a terrible thing and we have to do something about her and her and the party.
So that's what he said in the speech.
Well, in order to answer the question, I suppose.
But it's in the front.
He said, that's what the president told me to say.
If I was asked about the water, he actually said it's a terrible thing that I can't tolerate.
And I said, well, George, that's right, but that's in a different sort of context than what you're talking about here.
And he said, nobody questions, nobody's asking you to defend the water.
That's the last part of the conversation.
Or, well, no one.
Otherwise, that's a public statement.
We don't tolerate that.
We don't tolerate that.
He's saying we've got to do something about it.
Yeah.
That's the bad thing.
Yeah.
And that's what all the other guys are saying.
And I said, George, as we talked yesterday, you know perfectly well that we're concerned about that.
And I said, can you imagine that I have any less interest than you do in trying to get this cleared up?
And he said that you can't expect our – your friends, our friends to come out and defend it.
And I said, absolutely not.
And I wouldn't expect – I wouldn't go out and defend it either.
But I'm certainly not going to go out and say we sure have a problem here and that somebody better do something about it.
And it would be awfully helpful if our so-called friends on the Hill took that same approach.
If they're asked questions, what they should say is the President has fully cooperated
an investigation on this thing in every possible way.
We come in here for it.
And just stay out of the facts and the problems, cuz they don't know what they're talking about.
And then he said, well, I understand that.
But he goes back to these, he doesn't want me to get any impression.
I'm friends with him.
I said, well, how do you explain a little whacker?
He started a member of the committee, RSI.
He said, that's a terrible thing.
Baker's very upset about that, too.
And I said, why are you assuming you're joking with me?
I said, you almost get to the point of wondering why Weicker doesn't return the $65,000 in cash that he accepted from donors who wanted to support the president in his election campaign.
And we reported it before.
Bush said, boy, you ought to hit him on that.
So I'm not exactly in the position to.
It's hard to see how he feels he can keep that kind of support when he's now in charge on his shoulders.
And George knows about it.
Well, we're going to get it.
We're going to have to get the fact radio.
It's going to be no more.
I don't know why.
It's a public thing, but it's just spreading some kind of.
He's on some kind of a strange check, but I'm not sure what it is.
It's a grain standing operation, obviously.
He sure is, because he calls press conferences and goes through all this stuff.
And Mitchell says, I don't know what his sources, but he says his sources say that what White was after is a plumber's operation.
It seems to me, obvious to me, that what Walker's after is me trying to tie in Cigretti, you know, which we heard he was trying to do.
Into the water he has a massive... That is what he's told.
Great!
On the other hand, maybe he's using that as a cover-up.
Well, he may be after both.
I mean, he may be trying to tie the whole thing together as a... which you can do through the... through the appearance of my small book.
We should have defended both of the plumber's operations.
We can defend the cigarette.
I just want to get the separators off.
That's the strategy to consider, too, is putting on a confusing issue.
Nothing wrong if you can't defend it, but you may have to deal with it.
But the cigarette, I still...
We should just walk it out and say what happened.
Dean?
If you were right, that's going on.
Yesterday was a neat check.
Yeah, so especially with the reservations that they came back with, and I think this approach is better than saying, than naming names.
I think it's a much better name to say in principle.
Well, as far as the story is concerned, Ron was right about the way it would be handled.
The Watergate story, that massive kind of play, which John said, he said, what's going to be our Watergate story, Mark?
We can't look at it, Bob, in that way, ever.
We're going to have committees going out the day after day after day on our Watergate story, but we're not.
Our Watergate story today is going to be awesome.
Today?
This one, October, right?
Call them because of what?
Because of McCord?
Yeah, and there is a prime example of the money stuff.
The Washington Post, which I would have never cited as a source of information, has what I would guess is probably the accurate point, which is that their questioning report said that he understood that.
No, all he said was that he had sent a memorandum to all of them at some point outlining the security precautions that were being taken for White House staff members at the Miami Beach Convention.
And he...
That's all he, that was the only communication he had with Haldeman.
He had no knowledge of any Haldeman involved in this thing at all.
Well, that got distorted into Baldwin or Son to be, McCord names Haldeman as the, uh, thing.
So they ran as a big headline, the picture.
So I had to tell them they had to put it on my doorstep this morning.
You walked out of the shed.
Well, the New York Times had that too, actually.
They had some, in purpose, to put more information.
But see, you've got one senator said, apparently, to the Sun, or one source out of the Senate committee said to the Sun this one thing.
Two sources said that that wasn't true.
They said, contrary to reports published in other papers, the report did not make more
Does that make any sense?
So you would not suggest that he be coaxed between those two?
No.
I really, I sure would suggest that he coax me.
And just, I'm going to make the other guy in here.
And Chuck's in good shape.
He's, there's no problem with that at all.
I don't think he should be coaxed.
Yeah.
He should not be coaxed.
And having Dean in with her, because I would have known he was here in person.
But I don't know what she'd cover with Dean, except just to say, I don't know, like how Dan didn't cover her.
He'd say, uh, Mom might get his views.
You get this funny boy with raw human stomach aches.
As you grind people against the wall, it starts grinding.
Mitchell, that's why it was not so sure you had a girl named Dean, I don't know whether this is true, but Mitchell says that Dean doesn't trust her, and that's her that is maneuvering to San Diego.
And Dean thinks that Mitchell and Maguta are maneuvering to San Diego.
That's what he tells me.
He doesn't anymore.
I don't think Earl is going to agree to sink anybody.
I don't think Earl is going to agree to keep himself a litter.
You're damn right he will.
And that's everything that was in the show.
As long as he doesn't pull anyone else, I don't think he will.
And I don't think John has the will.
John doesn't do it at the expense of somebody else.
Most of our people actually will.
Of course, man, we don't know why that happened.
I don't know, Mitchell, he's moving hard on trying to protect himself on that dead eating thing, which is still the dilemma.
Because he was just talking to me and reminding me that I knew, you know, the meeting, if I had called that man to testify that there was
Yeah, but I want to take the time to think it through.
I went out there and I announced Ellsworth's bunker and went through my normal announcements.
And I said, now gentlemen, in anticipation of your questions, I would like to offer you these observations and regenerate our policy.
And went right through it.
And the questions that followed up were pretty well understanding questions.
They got into, well, how do you draw the distinction between the judicial branch and the legislator?
And I said, well, as you know from the March 12th statement, the president said that he would make the decision as to when the executive order should be exercised.
That's the only time I've used the word.
And I said that it is his view that the grand jury, which is conducting an inquiry into illegal activities, that if they feel that any member of the White House staff should testify,
regarding alleged knowledge of the Watergate matter, that they should do so.
In relation to the legislative branch, I said that we'll proceed on a policy which we have outlined to cooperate and work out an informal procedure where information that the committee would like to discuss with members of the White House staff can be provided.
And I did all the interviews .
Well, the thing to point out is that the judicial side seems to have worked out its procedures and knows what is good, and the legislative side is having a hard time with it.
Well, the White House opened up the possibility today that members of the White House staff might make formal face-to-face appearances before the Senators investigating the Watergate conspiracy.
Might make formal?
No.
Informal.
Did I say formal?
Yeah, I thought you did.
might make influence.
And that was what we anticipated.
Because they got, I said, we had, in discussing procedures, we had previously said that one way might be in response to good questions.
But then the question came and said, Ron, are you saying that members of the White House staff might go to the committee room and appear in informal sessions?
I said, I don't want to lead you to that conclusion.
What I'm saying is that
And I don't want to predict what might be worked out, but I'm saying that there might be other ways it can be developed for the larger organization.
But they don't suggest in the rooms.
They say face-to-face appearances before.
The same time Ziegler said any White House employee who might be summoned before the federal grand jury that is currently conducting a parallel inquiry
had been ordered by President Nixon to appear and testify.
In the past, the White House had suggested that any exchanges between the White House staff members and the Senate Select Committee Investigation Affair would probably be in writing.
You know, I never said that.
That was something that Bernie did.
That related to the Dean thing, and I made that point today in the briefing.
You didn't follow that in the briefing, because I didn't say that.
No, sir, and I reminded them that you never said that.
I never said that in the briefing.
I said we would work out a procedure.
We wouldn't cooperate, but he would not appear before the committee in a formal session.
I went over and over.
You amplified by saying, for example, the .
I went over and over today the point that the purpose of bringing together in one place the statement today was to alleviate misapprehension that it is our objective to cover up and to withhold information.
What I understand totally.
Massive misapprehension is what I use.
All of a sudden that's what she did.
Massive misapprehension in regard to...
misapprehension misapprehension and some deliberate misrepresentation regard policy the policy that will be followed with regard to the policy will be followed with regard to
Cooperation of cooperation of and investigations and investigations in regard to the legal
The policy has been, and is, one of any matter of White House status, except, uh, who, uh, who is, uh, called for, uh,
information about alleged knowledge of the Watergate matter.
Well, I, uh, well, if you say relevant, it ain't very good.
Providing information for, well, this is just knowledge.
He's saying I felt it.
Providing information in regard to, uh, any information.
As far as the Senate is concerned,
there will be cooperation with, how do you, how do you, what do you got, with regard to the Senate as concerned, do you, what is the lead, is it the table that we mow, work out a procedure?
As far as the Senate is concerned, the members of the White House are prepared,
I'm just saying, answer relevant questions.
Answer relevant questions.
That's all.
Under a procedure that is not...
Under a procedure.
Under a procedure which does not violate the...
formal discussions are being undertaken at this time to determine whether a satisfactory proceeding or such interrogation
That's what you had there to begin with.
Do you have your amendment?
Right.
Do you want me to take the time?
No, not the whole thing.
In relation to the Senate committee, I would like to emphasize and repeat to you at the end of the day, I'll leave out the bullshit, that this president has made clear that it will not be the objective of the White House to cover up or withhold the information regarding the Watergate matter.
Oh, that's another thing.
There's been a misapprehension.
The, the, the, it is, it has been, it has not been, and has never been, the proceeding of the White House to cover up what was said.
To cover up or uphold information.
To cover up or uphold any information regarding that.
On the contrary, the position has been full cooperation with the FBI, the Grand Jury, and other law enforcement organizations.
And then go into your other two points.
We have stated repeatedly and indeed have demonstrated through our actions our desire not to withhold or cover up.
We feel procedures can be established.
The White House will continue to cooperate with the committee.
It is our feeling that this can be done, while at the same time preserving the separation...
The way I hear it here is better, I think, in regards to a procedure for which does not violate the principle and so forth can be worked on in which all relevant information is obtained or something like that in an orderly and judicious manner.
or something like that.
Okay.
In other words, let me ask you this.
What seems to me, you've got to figure what do we want to have rather than others.
What do you want to have?
One, that there has been a massive misapprehension with regard to the position.
Second, that misapprehension is that the White House is covering up
as far as the Congress is concerned
and other informal committee hearings.
We believe that we are undertaking
I think so.
Are you agreed?
Yes, I am.
See, if you'd done it yesterday, it would have been all that mixed in.
Of course, if we would have done it yesterday, too, it would have been applied specifically to Dean.
That's right.
Dean would be the focal point of the thing, I don't think.
Well, the McCarty stuff, things that I never read, you start to understand it.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to use the parts that are different to deal with.
That's what they're going to say.
So, unsubstantiated charges.
All right.
Get it started.
All right.
I'll give you one.
Alright, we don't have anything to do on that.
How does the, how did they, what does the further report follow up on?
Did they get a good follow up on the speech, the reactions and all that sort of thing?
We got good on the business part of it and no play really on the reaction stuff.
We got good reaction stuff moved out and no play on it.
The other stuff, as far as the first run of it is, we'll get
What about our people generally at Army?
Are they, as they were trying to get reactions and so forth, did they get good reactions from Congress and Senate and so forth?
Very good reactions from people.
You've got a mixed thing, of course, on the meat thing.
Why would you expect that the budget thing gives the value of that is the simplicity of a hook to work on.
And that's the plus we're getting on that.
The defense people, of course, you have the whole line laid out on the defense budget now.
And now what we're doing now on the intensive effort is dividing it into two segments, the defense budget, hold the defense budget line, and that mobilizing that whole fraternity, which is a separate group on that subject.
And then the other thing being the
The case for that is the over the line of spending so we don't raise taxes and prices.
Right.
You've laid out the line.
I'm worried about the substance, but I've been worried about the process and how we get this going now.
responsibility on organizational and personal contacts of his broody and his crew the responsibility on congressional follow-up is tenants and the departmental congressional types where we've got we're trying to they've set up this thing now where they all work for us here and we're going to put it to them uh we have the uh press thing closet is taking on as his
a major story a day, and they're working to gin up the news-type pop-up on Chilliad, which actually defends him.
Hold on.
And then the whole people have to be ginning the organizational stuff that we've got, party and organization and campaign committee.
There you go.
And you get the name of the guy, then we'll get him.
You would think that, I don't know.
I think we'll get a Democratic Party, we might have them differently, but I would think some of our own people like, other than just saying the line, we got them saying, you know, we've got a problem with all that stuff.
Oh, there were.
Were there?
Yep.
But nobody's carrying that.
All they carried was the specific reaction to whether we should or shouldn't have controls on the crisis.
And whether that was enough or too much.
As far as the personal reaction to the speech campaign, almost totally solid.
There is one school of thought, which is a very small one that I mentioned in Frank Dale's comment, that it covered too much ground.
There is far more that was the other way of saying it was good to cover, to move from the one to the other.
Dale, I think, is a purely political partisan in a sense, wanted to just to gloat on ending the war and leave it there.
Speeds would have been then.
That would have grossed a very good error.
Well, he would have liked it, but everybody else would have said, what the hell was he going to tell us before we held the war?
I knew that.
I knew that.
I would have preferred to do that.
Well, sure.
But I knew it wasn't easy.
I was glad that we could do the other thing.
A lot of positive reaction to the POW close.
A lot of very good reaction to the putting the budget thing into simple terms that people understand.
The bug stops here.
The bug stops here, like, playing back a lot.
It's not the federal budget, it's the family budget.
We're trying to work out the little excerpts and use of those lines and outtakes for the people now to keep pushing.
I think it was worth the effort.
I wrote every goddamn word of that thing myself.
Very definitely, it worked.
I guess maybe what I have to do is to, about every two months, take off four days and try to write something.
Because it isn't that I'm so good, but at least the difficulty with the spec, Bob,
And it's true, John Rutherford's staff is just the same.
It's just as true as his staff.
I mean, I'm watching them, and they're no better.
God damn it, they don't know how to go over the judgment.
They don't know how to put it in those simple, organized, tight terms.
I'm not the most brilliant writer, but God damn it, I know how to do it.
But you've never gotten this out of that staff.
You would never have gotten that out of them.
And nor out of the speech record staff.
That's right.
Any of the writers or the others, any of the early ones, or this or that.
That's why I can't recommend the speech records.
You know what?
They're both supposed to be working together.
They do.
But you know, what it requires is an enormous amount of concentration and hard work, which I know they put in.
But I think what it requires is that they don't have this understanding.
You've got to make it simple.
You've got to think and organize.
And it's ought to be very organized.
Organized.
That's the mark of the Nixon speech.
If ever somebody can get it through, it's not that one.
Sapphire knows that.
He can't write one, but he's once said it.
That's the mark of the speech.
He said it's organized.
Architechtural thing.
Now that was a damn well organized.
Here's another slide from March 23rd to the end of the January 3rd.
It was also a damn good one for 10 minutes.
But to put this much in 21 minutes was one hell of a job.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Young's had, uh, nobody, if I had had to, if I had sent that around earlier than the Schultz and Kissinger, they would have doubled the number.
They'd say, well, we've got to say more and more and more and more.
You know, I didn't submit it to one, not one person saw it.
And it, but I think it was necessary.
That's, you know, and I, I'll tell you, I'm convinced that, you know, it sounds like, I don't know, maybe you're saying rhetorically, but I think you're right.
Not that you do every couple months or some time, whenever it needs to be done.
But I think the way for you to do a speech is to take the time to do it.
Then do it that way on four networks.
You sure as hell should never do that if you're going to go out and talk to the Chamber of Commerce or something, never.
You shouldn't bother to write those speeches because nobody will ever know what you said anyway except the Chamber of Commerce.
But when you go on network television on prime time,
on all three networks preempted time, and go to the kind of thing on the last night, which has to hit somewhere between 65 and 80.
When you do that, it's awful hard.
What I was saying, I know it's hard, but what I was saying to the others is, you take everything that you've done all week, this week and last week, every week,
The sum total of every decision you've made, every action you've taken, every move you've made, every, every iota, item, use of your time or your energy or your thought, and all of it.
And the sum total is not 10% as important as that speech.
And look at the crowd today.
The end of the war.
I turned down the rockets.
Thank God.
I tried to roll him in here today, too.
And I said, no, I'm not going to be in here.
And I had John Johnson.
What did you do with the Japanese, or whatever you call it, a bunch of Japanese governors?
Japanese governors?
Yeah, there was something came up that said, you said you wanted to see the Japanese governors.
They're not here today.
I don't, I guess not either.
Oh, I, I wasn't like, because our, it's the goddamn governor's conference that wants me to go to their place, so I'm there.
John said it was a better question.
I don't ever, ever send a person on a trip again, and I'm worried that they're going to have to die, and I'm worried that they're going to get in a beat, but I haven't exactly had enough time.
Recording of this stuff, you know, they just get fascinated with it, Bob.
we should not do it, they should report to the cabinet they should, the cabinet doesn't give a damn about their trip to here nobody cares, it's just like the person's trip should come back to take slides, nobody wants to look at it and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
the Soviet Minister of Culture, Donald Johnson, the Excellency, the Ambassador, the Shackler.
That was a nice thing.
Our old Frankie Burgess, my lawyer, I had to do that.
John Kirk, I had to do that.
I had to do that.
You don't know how many times a renegade turned up.
You know, the toughest one, the toughest turn down this week has been
absolute determination that you must go to the National Gallery of Art last night in Black Tie, after you did your television speech, to view the opening of the Soviet Art Exhibit.
Which is not a Soviet Art Exhibit, it's...
I know it's the Art Exhibit, but most of it, and then it's our own department, our own exhibit.
It was the collection of 450, of whom I mentioned 400, or any of the people who were there last night.
450 people at the reception type thing, of which I would guess 400 are probably against this.
Don't ever let me go to an army.
Don't ever let me go to an army.
Basically, the president's got to go.
Everybody.
This is the thing.
I'm the only, I think this is one where it will give birth to an isolation story.
They're all saying, God damn, hold them.
We'll let the president out.
Oh, Christ.
I was too tired to do it.
But what if you hadn't had anything else to do that night?
We're sitting here utterly bored.
I'd bite to the death that that's, that you ought to go boating on the Potomac before you did that.
It's, I mean, they said... You know, I, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a,
I'm glad that they decided to write it and read it.
The reading really isn't a problem.
Well, it is.
I can do a better one.
I can swell it right out there.
You can if you're ready to, but not if you aren't.
It's very hard to do.
It's sort of risky when an actual television is turned on.
So they ad-libbed it around.
It was too important to stay to be ad-libbed.
Well, it was so nicely constructed.
This one, I think, was so well-organized that I tried to follow your words.
I didn't worry anybody about it.
I read them all.
They all said, you know, people expect more than you read.
I read well enough.
You know what I mean?
I don't make any blubs.
Jack Rice, I can make every part of the night.
I know that he helps me bust around blubs.
I must have read a whole lot of that in the camera too.
You were right in a very good part of time.
Well, you know it did some good.
It gives us, if it didn't do any, if nobody saw our show, didn't do anything at all, it still gave us a vocal point to crank stuff.
And you know people saw it.
And you know that...
The great bulk of them are favorably impressed by it.
I mean, that almost is a given.
It's almost impossible to even go on and not have it now.
Yeah, one of those issues, the POW issue was ours.
The peace issue was ours.
The defense issue was probably ours.
I put it, you know what, the U.S. could be second.
And the budget issue is very nearly ours.
If you say don't raise your taxes, I'll raise your taxes.
Now, Bob, if you throw all those out there, the meat prices can be, it's 80% out.
It's only special vendors that don't think we should raise.
80% of the people want prices.
the only area they want more they want you to control more or stronger knock them down instead of just stealing the average guy the average guy every guy you took action on meat prices and that's all he did he did something about it that's what he wants you to do something about it he went out and said you know what the press do you know i don't know but he's going to stop the meat prices from going up
I'm sure they'd rather... That's a good thing, though, to have that in there.
Me versus Lee, wasn't it?
Sure.
Because that gave the news up.
Now, you talk to the news guys, and they worry.
They say, well, there was too much news in it, some of them.
The other said it wasn't enough, and that it was just the only news was the meat thing, and you should have just concentrated on that or something.
Well, but they overlook the fact that you're not trying to make news.
There wasn't...
And who's that part of our people?
I mean, our industry?
Yeah.
Well, I don't mean just our industry.
I don't mean the, the, the professionals on, you know, editors and stuff.
Right.
The people that you see.
They're the ones that make the television.
That's right.
That makes that television.
That's right.
And it just, we don't, I started it more this morning when we were talking about Ron doing a television clip on this thing and the importance of, well, the question of how we get our story out, you know, and I was saying,
But he was saying, well, it's too bad we can't.
Well, I guess Jerry Green hit him on, why doesn't Harlan?
Why doesn't Harlan?
No, Green.
Why doesn't Harlan?
No, no, why doesn't Harlan?
Give me his story.
I'll run.
I'll run their case, your case, the way you want.
And the New York Daily does.
Now, Newsweek also offered to do the same thing.
They said, we'll run.
And you'll have a definitive statement there.
But as I said to Mark, that one time I was on the Today show, I got over 2,000 pieces of mail as a result.
From the Newsweek thing, I haven't gotten 20 pieces of mail as a result.
And what 20 I've gotten are from people like Dave Mahoney who writes me and I say, you ruined my week by your picture on the cover of Newsweek or something.
I'm kidding, or something like that.
No response.
And Moore was saying that he was mentioned in Time magazine in some way or in connection.
And he went to a dinner two days after that in California, all people he knew, and nobody mentioned the Time magazine thing.
The following week, he was on the George Putnam show for about 17 seconds saying something.
And he said, for weeks afterwards, people called him, wrote him, raised him with them, and everything.
This office is nothing else other than to learn how to use it.
We're going to use it in a goddamned way.
We're outside of our goddamned heads.
It's the way to get out of it.
I'm going to use the press conference technique, but I've decided now that I'm thinking more and more.
It's 7.30 today.
It's 7.30 time.
Over there in this room, a waiter's not a waiter.
Rather than doing the thing out here in the office, get a letter that gives a notice that they'll all be there really prepared and all that sort of thing.
Well, yeah, in a way, it may be that they're better if they do get a little time because they try to not look as stupid in their questions.
They just don't want to be loaded with that.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know how else you can find anything.
You've got to bring your own people to the fight.
Well, I don't know if you can.
I honestly can't.
I'm very disappointed.
You know what?
I agree.
I agree.
Except for a very small group of one of us.
But most everybody in the conference phone would be in that second round.
And at the party beginning, you would expect them to be aggressive.
The more you suck, the less it means.
And there only wouldn't be any problems.
I didn't go too far.
I don't really have.
I mean, the point is to answer the idea of our isolation from the Congress.
But come on, we've done it.
They still say it.
So I think it needs us.
I'm not so sure they're still saying it.
Oh, we can get on.
But then maybe we'll take it.
But they'll start again.
Well, yeah, well, because, for instance, the Wednesday group, when I was up there, they said, we couldn't let the president come on.
Somebody over my court said, I was at a breakfast on reorganization or something like that.
I was there because I was a ranking member.
The president
talked about that but then at the end he talked for about 10 minutes or so in Vietnam and he gave us a picture of things there and he said it was just inspiring and enormously helpful and he said now why don't we set up a thing where all of us can every couple weeks have that kind of communication so that we have we have that feeling of really being tied to the president and I don't know I said you mean you would want to bring the entire membership up he said well maybe select the people I said well we do that you know
He said, what do you mean?
I said, well, the president took the initiative in adding a group of non-ranking members to the leadership meetings.
And he said, well, that only does it for a few.
And what any one of them is saying is, if I'm not there, it doesn't make a difference who else is.
That's the problem here.
Yes.
Well, I sent him a call earlier today.
Said he wanted to see him, that he was going to be around here almost next week.
He wants to drop by.
John says he's going to be in California.
And I said, well, no rush.
At some point, I want to talk to you.
And he made some allusion to the point that you had raised, that he was
He was saying, this isn't the week for me.
He said, I'm not in any rush on something or something.
This isn't the week to move to the Republican Party or something like that.
Well, I think the Republicans let the vote go by almost probably.
But you see, we let it go by.
Now, it isn't going to get any better in Watergate.
It's going to get worse.
Well, it's getting worse for a while.
Well, it's going to come to an end.
Yeah, the committee will come in with the theories.
And we'll be having a new story every day, and we'll be sub-crediting, and we'll be funding operations, and we'll be, you know.
That's going to be the percent of it for a lot of them.
There's going to be more stands up there, and we're going to get an investor, and we're going to make sure, and so forth, and so on, and so on.
It's going to be one hell of a time.
I don't know.
But you see, it waits that long, Mike.
That's what worries me about him anyways.
I've never been convinced that he was really determined to go for them.
His view was to sit there and if it came jumping... Where would he set the view then, leaving him out of the picture?
Huh?
Rock the bus.
Not able?
No.
Why not?
They just...
It is.
You kill Rocky?
I'll make it happen.
Yeah.
Oh, sure.
Rocky with your backing?
Yes, sir.
I mean, it's, uh...
I don't think you'd have any problem at all.
I mean, sure you'd have some problem, you'd have some blundering, but if you came rocky against you, you'd never, you would never, never, never have any chance.
But rocky would fix Rocky.
I know I didn't.
Regular.
Regular.
We have a fight.
We have a fight.
See, if you decided to back Rocky... Oh, no.
No, I don't make any questions.
For, first of all, there's a big chunk of the party that would like to have Rocky.
And then there's a big chunk of the party that will do whatever Nixon wants done.
And then there's a big chunk of the party in the middle, not in the middle, on the right, that won't do what Nixon wants done.
that don't like Nixon or Rocky, that abide Nixon because he's the best they can get, that would be very much opposed to Rocky, whether or not Nixon was backing him.
And those people will fight.
But if you combine Rocky's money and ability to get people with our knowledge, the Nixon knowledge, of what to do about the, how to get a Republican nomination,
and put the two together, right?
There would be no problem with taking on anything.
What are they going to have in the common language to do this?
Mark, you would have to cut a deal with a good conservative young boss person.
To learn?
Well, maybe it wasn't intended to complicate it, Bob.
He may not have done that.
Well, there's some questions as to whether he...
I mean, we talked about all the doubts about him.
But they're doubts about everybody else.
There's plenty of doubts about Rocky.
Yeah.
Starting with his... his incivility.
But the thing he's got...
He wants good people and he hires good people.
He uses the people he hires.
I'm sorry.
Consciousness.
Either get them to be hit with or use what he's got.
That's a very good point.
Delegate.
He's got that work.
The other guy.
Let's hear the guy across the street now.
the point is what they didn't recognize is that there's no vice president is not an executive a vice president is supposed to delegate
He's going to do the job.
He's basically a ceremonial and operational guy.
And you can't delegate, the vice president, you can't hire an administrative assistant to do the ceremonial stuff to make the, lay the wreath at Arlington.
The whole point is that you gotta do it.
And you can't delegate the operational stuff that you ought to be doing in terms of personal contact with senators and congressmen, party people, and that sort of thing.
As president, when you became an executive, this is the first executive job you've ever had.
True.
When you became an executive, you delegated to .
Senator can't delegate.
Senator's a legislator.
He's not an executive.
He's not supposed to delegate.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I guess just go on, do our job.
The problem is, that sounds fine, but I don't, if that's the decision, then we've got to make that as a very, it's got to be a clear-cut decision.
It's got to exercise total discipline to enforce that approach, because the tendency, just as Christy said this morning,
It's hard to do, and we've got to be able to double-team.
In other words, on the day that I get hit, there's got to be other people to fill in because you get thrown off balance when you get hit.
On the day that Earth gets hit, on the day that Ziggler gets hit, they're going to double-team.
And there's got to be a mechanism if you're going to do that.
There's got to be a mechanism to deal with the Senate somewhere.
To deal with the charges and what happens.
There's got to be somebody running.
Because you can't ignore it.
The White House as an entity can't totally ignore it.
We can't just let it flow whatever direction it goes.
That is the problem.
We've got to consider that.
It's a mechanism which you can take, probably take one or more people like her because I didn't run it.
I didn't buy it.
That's just a job.
It's got to be more important.
But you have to do other things too.
It's not a job.
But it's got to be a job that you're giving to somebody.
You have to do things in some perspective here.
Let's just get them on.
That's the...
I asked him if he could come this morning.
He called me.
He was totally against the idea.
He said, well, I should have put him in there on water.
He said, no, you can't.
He said, no, you can't.
He said, no, you can't.
He said, no, you can't.
He said, no, you can't.
I think that's the point that I, the point that I, that I, that I've got to get the Bushes and the Rests and the Scots and so forth.
I've got to remember the President's got to be President.
I've got a ton of things that I have to go over with Schultz this morning, which is why I said they're terribly important and good for the cosmos.
I must say, these are the, well, let's look at it this way.
It's really, it's the same thing, and it's an extension of it, of the political campaign.
The strategy in the political campaign was that we kept the campaign essentially 90% away from you.
You kept in touch with it.
You knew what was happening and you had some input on some key decisions from time to time.
Not a lot.
You reviewed your own position periodically and evaluated it.
The way I kept in touch with it is I was basically sure two people knew.
And Colson, Colson, you know, with regard to the, he did the send letter polls and this and that and what the counter-attack was and this and that.
And I made some, we made some good suggestions.
And then I first reviewed all the operating schedules and so forth and so on.
And then the polls, right?
That's what all I did.
I just talked to other people.
Every, then we had once a week or every two weeks or so, we'd have a group of people.
It was used to happen only for therapy.
And they didn't really agree with the government.
All right.
So I think you've got to work out that kind of approach on this.
Because this is a thing that's going to last longer than the campaign.
And it's going to be more intense on a day-to-day basis than the campaign.
You can't ignore them totally because you can't not read the paper or read the news.
So you'll know what's hitting you.
You need to be
periodically informed and sometimes consultative.
But you should not get into the details of it.
And you shouldn't let it override everything, anything.
The whole point of this, we had a very good test this week, last week.
This was a quite important speech.
It was very hard for me to compartmentalize it because you can't just live in a town without knowing what's going on.
But we can't, I wouldn't be able to bother listening to that again, but every time I would be able to, for example, prepare for any press conference or write a maybe speech, maybe spending a couple hours, three hours a day, if you could ever get into this sort of thing at all, it tends to just destroy your concentration, your whole, you know, world.
So I think it's just how hard it is.
So you've kind of got to figure out how we operate on an ongoing basis and how you keep the worried words away and the faint hearts, which we also did as a campaign, but probably something else.
Because you can't get yourself, if you stop thinking about all of them.
If you stop thinking about the campaign, how many memorandums and so forth, you must get your way to thank God that you remember all the little prayers and the rest and everything.
It's a crisis.
Let me summarize.
You know, I can give very little in what different people were thinking.
Yeah, you can get rid of them all.
But no, no, no.
You can get in all of them.
I'm getting you obsessed in all of them.
Right.
And if you didn't get them one at a time, you got them in a sense of balance.
So you had some feeling that, you know, it wasn't...
That's what you need, I think.
The one thing, for example, in a case like this, that's very bad, is to have Frank, or Jerry, or Bryce Harwell, or any of those kind of common people, and just beat the hell out of them by water.
There's no react.
You can't help them.
I didn't want to listen to any of them.
I didn't want to knock them.
There was a real five-year-old one here, one person, two, who doesn't know all the facts, doesn't have all the facts.
That's what happens.
I don't see, when you add it all up, that you have anybody who can run the watergate except John.
Yeah, you're right.
The problem is he's the perfect factor.
Yeah.
And it's likely that he's going to crunch in somewhere.
And when it crunches in, I don't know whether he's going to do it.
Well, if you're a backer, it would be because of the name, because of your position in this case.
That's exactly what they're doing now.
It's only, well, I don't know.
I read through the history of your position.
That was a total weak hearsay thing.
I saw, I read the post, you know, when I say read it, I don't read the whole story.
I did read through the paragraph itself, but I didn't read it.
that they were making the charge.
It was alleged that he had information that Jesus Christ Almighty, quote, I'm sorry, let's see, could we, those are, since you know that, we didn't know what the story was.
Even if he had been ready to talk,
I don't think the country, look, how many commentators last night after the speech talked about the fact that the President hadn't talked about the water game?
The one guy on the news last night before the speech, the news said, President, according to Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, will cover the water problem in his speech tonight, but not the water game.
That was the end of that.
And that fear point on the morning, this morning, said the president did not cover the issue.
It's just what John said that someone would say.
But that was on the morning report at that time.
And that was so, he just used that as a medium to start blocking all of today's watery gossip now.
And we're going to get that every day.
There's
But no, we aren't, because it's like today, there's nobody testifying.
So, well, I suppose we will if some Senate asshole will eat one more item or something.
I want you to get him so that we can find him.
I think we've got to play a tough damn hard game on him.
He's not a strong man.
I don't know who we've got.
And the man who delivered the bag man was gone now.
We can't find out.
We deliver the money with the mortgage development team at the back fence in town.
Can he be asked?
Yeah, he can be asked.
I just don't want to ask him.
I'm getting asked.
You are getting asked.
I want you to be sure to do that.
Yes, sir.
I am.
Who would you deliver the money to?
Because they've done the checking on his financial statements and everything.
As best we can, yeah.
Because it's income taxing, Jeff.
We got our man, Jeff.
We can update it with the instrument properties there.
Well, you don't have all the recordings then, do you?
Why don't you do me a favor?
No, we'll get around that.
I just said it's a campaign country.
Well, I know a little bit about it.
But then if you didn't record it as a campaign country, you should have broken the law.
Do you mind?
Sure.
You have to do one or the other.
I'm a little worried about it.
I was hoping a lot of other people would do it.
Sorry.
Of course, some of those guys did, so it's already busted open to a degree in that.
I mean, he may have.
See, that's where we got into the flap about that guy.
Yeah.
You didn't have to see the guys that did report it.
You didn't, uh... Was he one that did?
No.
As far as you know, he did not report it.
Check that.
He did not.
It's not reported that he got part of it.
Not... What did he...
that we can track down.
And he took it in cash.
You see, the guy that took it in cash had a problem reporting it.
Yeah, because he didn't know the source.
He never supposed to.
He didn't have to report.
He didn't have to match the source with the money.
All he had to do was list the sources and list the topics.
Separate lists.
You took it in cash.
I think you got it.
That's what they gave you.
Alright.
You have $150,000 in cash.
I think you got it.
There are other things that occurred to me that would pressure our votes in order.
The Republican, the calcium Republicans from the United States.
I hate Apollo and its Republicans, but I'll listen to them.
or that they're all scared, including the states.
Our real problem is we don't have anybody.
We're a little lonely band sitting there in the White House on the campaign campaign right now.
There's nobody.
There's nobody.
Our contributors,
or the party people or anybody else really that's willing to stand up.
They all stand up for the president.
Bush said, you know, nobody's mentioned the president.
I said, well, of course not.
They're scared of him.
They know he's stronger than they are.
That isn't the very manly act to not attack the president.
The question is, who's standing by the president's men?
Who's standing by the president's campaign?
And I said, George, if you took a survey up there of all those Republicans who have been critical that the White House hasn't stepped forward and told the whole story, and asked them, would you be willing to step forward and tell the whole story of the financing and operation of your last campaign?
Do you honestly believe that any of them would agree to?
He said, no.
None of them would.
I said, I think you're right.
Yeah.
I said, every campaign has things go wrong, and people do stupid things.
Money falls between the cracks, and some field worker does something that you don't want done.
And there's always some guy that's screwing a secretary and spying on the enemy or selling out to the enemy.
There was a presidential campaign.
There was a lot going on.
And he said, well, although they can do such a good job of running everything, they can't believe that you didn't know everything.
But part of it was something else.
It's not just that.
Part of it's the way, the play, the White House.
Not the present term.
I mean, they're all service.
I mean, that was a part of it.
And then the Adams case, I remember very well.
That's where it's on, to get the Adams case.
Because Adams had to make it.
It was in the hard work.
Yep.
And nobody defended him.
He had no friends.
That was wrong.
But it was true.
And so it is now.
They're all out there.
Because the problem they've got now is that the enemy, not our friends, the enemy is still hoping to try and haul you in.
Our friends want to meet me and go to the line.
I don't see how they can do that.
Haul you in?
Same theory.
They've got to...
One thing, I got a quote from you at some interview where you said that you run your own campaigns, but it shifts to the campaign time.
You take over the campaign.
I did.
That you did.
That's interesting.
If you were running it, it happened there, and then you go.
But I did it.
I was nominated.
The quote there, you want to be, if they want to take that, that is quite the moment.
I took it over.
They don't want to take it rationally.
They don't want to take it.
That's legitimate.
They must say they can't take it.
If I'd been in earlier, if I'd been in earlier, we would know this.
We would not have had this, because I think I would have been meeting with a few others.
I wasn't watching them close enough, right?
We were too busy.
I was too busy.
The girls were too busy.
What we really were, there was a night.
China, Russia, I said that to Bush to say, you know, there's probably a lot of things that weren't done right in the campaign because John Mitchell was supposed to be running and was still Attorney General and then was worried about his wife and then was, had the problem with the IT&T and the confirmation of client dates.
So he never concentrated on it.
I didn't.
I didn't have the responsibility, but I was just supposed to stay out of touch and didn't because I was in Russia and I was in China and I was working on the
Putting those trips together.
What the hell is going on here?
I reassure that they're going after the White House.
It's like they're going after the President too.
It's a way to...
I think, I think it would be an overstatement to say that in terms of the, uh, in terms of the, uh, the nuclear enemies, I'm just serious, while they won't make a threat, though, they're trying to get next to their enemy, they're not getting the person they're getting because of the way this rubs off on them.
That's what you're getting at.
Yeah.
Basically, they, uh, would be far-reaching.
They could get Mitchell, me, Earl, Dean, Colson.
They could wrap up that bag, plus a brooder and all the little things.
I'd say Jesus Christ.
You'd have a little problem.
No question.
Absolutely.
Still, not that it touches you, but that it makes you look pretty stupid if you had that crowd of clowns around you.
Why did I have to get my new purse?
The way they build it up, of course, is so it's interesting to get the irony.
It's a critical part of the narrative that he takes again.
That's why I didn't like the bush there.
I like the way he gets there.
It must have been a question he couldn't ask about everything.
If I were Bush, I would have said something good about the president last night.
He probably did.
I'm sure he did.
But why don't anybody think that?
Julie said that Baker was very good last night.
Bush said Baker was good.
Julie, go to the line on that.
Did she do that and the Russian?
That boat?
No, she shouldn't do that.
There's no more Jewish.
I guess Kershaw was going to do the Russian thing, wasn't she?
There's no more Jewish on that side.
That's the only thing for her.
If you don't mind.
Don't, please don't.
You know what he said?
There's a way you could cut yourself off from the earth anyway, isn't there?
The reason is that... You know, the man is pretty responsible here, Bob, as you know very well, especially when you just come right down to it.
Goddamn.
There's a rare way to do it without getting...
I mean...
I mean, you just... someone can say, look, I take responsibility very...
I guess, I mean, I must say, I didn't know what was going on, but I assumed the responsibility that nobody else knew.
That's really the story that needs to be told to somebody eventually, but he can't do that.
He can, and it may come to that anyway, if he became persuaded at any point that it was inevitably going to come to that, but he is not now persuaded of it.
I knew the administrative error.
I signed off on a program that I didn't know the details on.
And if I had known about it, I wouldn't have allowed it to be done, but it was done.
Because what that would do would be the same, really, as you and I, we know it is the campaign committee that's responsible for this.
Roger says it was the House of Credit and things like that, but Roger's not supported by those legitimate activities.
Although they won't appear to be that way in the press by now, they should not.
I'm curious how they're gonna do it.
And I don't think about any object that you would think that they were like.
And they ran, perhaps, about a dirty can in there.
And they'd call it riots.
Demonstrations.
It's a waste on a person to say about it that they didn't plan it.
Okay.
I'd like to hear it again.
Can we hold it up after, sir?
No, no, no.
It's 3 o'clock.
3 o'clock.
Yeah, I agree.
Let's take that off.
His wife's coming out to California.
Her mother has cancer, and I guess it's pretty serious.
She's going on the bike.
I think she went on it earlier.
But anyway, she's going out.
And John's going to go back up to Camp David and try to get his
All that stuff, and he said to me while he's here, she wanted to go out anyway, and so it worked out well to let her go.
Doesn't have to worry about getting it all sorted out.
Great.
All right.
I guess he kind of likes to have a candidate and somebody to .
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Get out and walk around.
Sweet.
Yes.
You're getting a call right now.
I'm going to talk to the team.
Why don't you make a call now then?
See you at 3 o'clock.
You going?
Yeah.
Hello.
Yes, I'm going.
Better hurry.